Assignment
SELF in the Diamond Model
Andrew Rockfish's Opening Remarks
This week we have a few truths to remember as we explore relationship building to create competitive advantage. Motivation and empowerment are two words that you have heard throughout your business education. Managers motivate and leaders empower. The lines are blurring at GDD. Managers are giving decision-making authority to teams and leaders are motivating other leaders to get the job done well. But good relationship building gets at the heart of the relationship of the leader and follower: trust, respect, and expertise. You cannot bring about change at GDD or any organization if the people do not trust. Like the earlier example of Robbins at Plastic Lumber Company, the inappropriate leadership style gave the impression to the floor workers that Robbins was weak, confused and therefore not in need of respect. Employees would not follow someone who seemingly was not worth following. Understanding who you are and what you want people to do is the first step in building relationships that influence others to follow you.
This week our discussion will focus on the skills needed as an individual leader to create and maintain relationships within GDD. We will also discuss the nature of the leader-follower relationship. Look carefully at the results of the personal assessment that you will take. There are two points to understanding the full import of the results. First, the results tell you a lot about the personal strength and weaknesses you may possess allowing you to contemplate areas of improvement and how you as a person relate to others. The second aspect of this information is how others relate to one another and the organization. For example, understanding how a candidate for a new job will fit into the department requires you know the personal traits of those in the department as well as the candidates to make an effective decision on the hire; one that will benefit the organization.
THEME ONE: Creating your own leadership energy as Clawson would suggest starts with knowing who are as person.
Before you can build relationships with others, it is important to reflect upon the personal skills you bring to the table. Knowing your leadership style is a start but using assessment tools and feedback from others will help define the extent to which you possess a personal "soft" skill set equal to the task of leading. Also, you will gain insight into how others perceive you and how you perceive others. The former skill helps the leader better sell their story and implement change while the latter skill set helps align and design the organization for greater effectiveness.
Read and View:
• How Implicit Personality Affects Leadership
• Personality and How It Relates to Leadership
• Emotional Intelligence and Leadership
• What is emotional intelligence?
• Interview of Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence Social Intelligence and Leadership
• Personality and Leadership 9.5min
• Personality and creating your Leadership style
Moral Compass Leading with Values
• Moral Intelligence for Successful Leadership
• Ultimate Ethics Quiz
• Why Leaders Lose Their Way
Communication
Communication skills are the leader's great set of paintbrushes as they cover and color every aspect of a leader's job and are essential to creating change.
Read:
• Critical Leadership Skills
• How Good Are Your Communication Skills
View:
• Communicating in the Workplace
• Leadership Communication Why it is Important
Complete:
Learning Activity 1 Theme One: Creating your own leadership energy as Clawson would suggest starts with knowing who are as person.
Take the following quizzes.
• After a review and reflection of the results, discuss how knowing more about your personality, emotional IQ, communication, ethics and your natural inclinations to be a leader can improve your relationships with others in the workplace. (Students can reflect generally or specifically on the results to the class. Privacy is important to us all so if you choose not to give actual numbers and just the results in general, that is fine.)
• Think over your experiences in the workplace and find five examples where personality, emotional IQ, communication, or ethics helped to create trust or lose trust, for you, in a leader.
• Jung Typology Test
• EQ Test
• Ultimate Ethics Quiz
• How Good Are Your communication Skills
• Would You Make a Good Leader?
• Leadership Skills
Learning Activity 2
Assess how Bloom might go about solving her leadership relationship building problems. Take into consideration her personality traits, organizational values, emotional intelligence and the social leadership aspects of her role as leader. In short, how can you make her a new woman; one that the department would want to follow?
Orlanda Bloom was made Director of Accounting of GDD. She worked hard in her new post. Having worked at GDD over the last twenty-five years, Bloom was known for being tough but fair in her approach to her workers. She was civil to everyone but was considered a loner by her peers and remote in her dealings with others. Fearful that should would not be treated with respect and determined that she would be obeyed in her new job, Bloom became overly attentive to her workers. She micromanaged everyone from the lowest bookkeeper to her immediate assistant director. She penalized workers and put negative reports in people's personnel files for the smallest infraction. The accounting department personnel, who were known to have the best morale in the company became the most demoralized and unresponsive workers. HR director, Simon was flooded for transfer requests. Worse yet, several people left for jobs in other companies. Simon reviewed the situation and decided that it might be best to consider giving Bloom one more chance in view of her long history with the company. However, imposing a probationary period for six months was seen as necessary and if the negative reports continued she would be asked to retire or fired if she refused to retire.
Scared and worried for her career, Bloom comes to you to ask for advice.
Assignments
Project Two: Leadership Styles/Approach
Purpose:
The purpose of this assignment is for you to develop a Relationship Building Action Plan.
Outcome Met by Completing This Assignment
• use leadership theories, assessment tools, and an understanding of the role of ethics, values, and attitudes to evaluate and enhance personal leadership skills
• develop and implement methods for establishing a constructive organizational structure and culture that fosters positive employee and employer relationships
• assess the interactions between the external environment and the organization to foster responsible and effective leadership and organizational practices
Background:
After a relaxing weekend, you come to work, sit down at your desk and open your email. The following is an email to you from Andrew Rockfish:
I am sending this email to you because of the personal nature of the material contained within your next assignment. It is incumbent upon all good leaders to assess continuously their personal leadership skills, style, and approach.
You will be developing a personal relationship building assessment plan. Much like an annual doctor's check-up, the goal of the assessment plan is to develop a procedure for evaluating the status of your personal skills, style, and attitude in your work with others. Included in the assessment plan is a review of your leadership strengths, weaknesses, results of leadership assessments, feedback methodology, attitude, and leadership style.
Relationship building is a dynamic process just as situations change so too can the people skills needed to address the situation. Periodic review of those skills will benefit you by noting weaknesses and areas of change or improvement needed in your behavior.
So, what exactly am I asking you to do that needs confidentiality? Well, your plan is going to be the result of the following hypothetical evaluation you received after your first year with GDD. Although the hypothetical evaluation could be much better, we have found that the results provide trainees the opportunity to reflect upon one's actual results and to prepare for personal growth moving forward.
The hypothetical scenario is one in which you were promoted a year ago into a leadership position. However, the past year has proved to show several issues and the results are not at all what we were hoping for when we promoted you. Still, experience has taught us that help starts with an employee taking stock of their personal skills. Since we believe that you have the potential for being an excellent department head, we would like to take measures toward your development. Please follow the instructions below:
Instructions:
Step 1: Preparation for the Assignment
Before you begin writing the report, you will read the following requirements that will help you meet the writing and APA requirements. Not reading this information will lead to a lower grade:
Review "How to Analyze a Case Study" under Week 5 Content. You are expected to use the facts from the case scenario focusing on using this information to determine opportunities and solve problems.
Read the grading rubric for the assignment. Use the grading rubric while writing the report to ensure all requirements are met that will lead to the highest possible grade.
In writing this assignment, you will read and following these tasks:
Task 1: Third person writing is required. Third person means that there are no words such as "I, me, my, we, or us" (first person writing), nor is there use of "you or your" (second person writing). If uncertain how to write in the third person, view this link: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/first-second-and-third-person.
Task 2: Contractions are not used in business writing, so you are expected NOT to use contraction in writing this assignment.
Task 3: You are expected to paraphrase, which can be learned by reviewing this link: https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/QPA_paraphrase2.html.
Task 4: You are responsible for APA only for in-text citations and a reference list.
Task 5: You are expected to use the facts from the case scenario paired with the weekly courses readings to develop the analysis and support the reasoning. No more than three external resources can be used in completing the assignment. The expectation is that you provide a robust use of the course readings. If any material is used from a source document, it must be cited and referenced. A reference within a reference list cannot exist without an associated in-text citation and vice versa. View the sample APA paper and the How to Cite and Reference file located under Course Resources/Writing Resources content.
Step 2: How to Set Up the Plan
Create a Word or Rich Text Format (RTF) document that is double-spaced, 12-point font. The final product will be between 5-7 pages in length excluding the title page and reference page and appendix. You may not exceed seven (7) pages so it is important to write clearly and concisely.
Follow a Report Format.
• Create a title page with title, your name, the course, the instructor's name and date;
• Introduction
• Leadership Table (make sure the tables are formatted to fit within the report and are easy to read and interpret)
• Leadership Assessment
• Relationship Building Action Plan
Step 3: Leadership Table
In this hypothetical scenario, the review is complete and the results of the evaluation as well as feedback from your peers and direct reports are in your hands.
The key to success in this project is to accept the "GDD Evaluation Form" contents as a real assessment of your performance at GDD for the first year's work in this position. While the information within the form is obviously hypothetical, you must place yourself in the position and address the situation as if it were truly you.
Task 1: Carefully review the Evaluation Form and Peer/Direct Report Comments:
Task 2: Examine the comments and identify those statements that relate to the following concepts: your strengths as a leader, your weaknesses as a leader, communication skills, personality, emotional IQ, with respect to others - trust, leadership attitude, leadership style, and vision/strategic goal implementation.
Task 3: Complete the Leadership Table with the remarks you have selected.
Topic Comment Phrase (s)
Strengths as a Leader
Weaknesses as a Leader
Communication Skills
Personality
Emotional IQ
Trust
Leadership Approach
Demonstrated Leadership Style
Vision/Strategic Goal Implementation
Task 4: Write one paragraph for each topic, relating the conclusions that you have drawn as to your effectiveness as a relationship builder over the past year. Support the conclusions/reasoning with the course readings (weeks 1 - 6). Be brutally honest with the conclusions that you draw. This is personal and means your future with GDD is on the line.
Step 4: Leadership Assessment
To ensure you have a complete picture of your leadership skills, you will need to take the following leadership assessments. If you took any of these assessments back in week 5, you may use those results but you must complete all assessments. Please be sure to include the actual results in the appendix of the plan. Note: your results are confidential.
Write a short summary of the results of each quiz or test.
• Jung Personality Typology Test
• Emotional IQ
• Communication Skills
• Self Esteem Quiz
• Are you a Leader Test
• Leadership Skills
• Leadership Style Quizzes
Step 5: Relationship Building Action Plan
Now that you have completed the evaluation and read the feedback comments and results from the leadership assessments, it is time to develop a plan of action for improvement. Focus on the process of how to bring about improvement rather than what you should do. What are the steps you will take to resolve the weaknesses you have? Think of the leadership action plan as a way to improve the relationship-building skills with others and influence the people within the department to accomplish the work in an efficient manner that meets organizational standards and satisfies customers.
To accomplish the action plan, you will complete the tasks listed below. Be thoughtful in your responses reflecting upon all of the input documents. In completing each task, you will formulating a thesis statement and support the reasoning with rigorous, focused thinking that demonstrates the analytical skills GDD is looking from you.
Task 1: Read all of the reports and provided information closely.
Task 2: Provide an introduction that explains why people skills are important for a leader to possess.
Task 3: Identify and discuss the people skills that are lacking in your relationship with others as demonstrated in the assessments and feedback received in Step 3.
Task 4: Explain how the missing or weak people skills are hindering your success at building relationships with followers.
Task 5: Explain the significance of the leader-follower relationship to fulfilling the strategic plan of the leader.
Task 6. Identify the one critical factor from the facts provided (aside from the weaknesses in personal skills), that will specifically affect your leader-follower relationship more than any other factor. Explain how and why this fact will affect your future if not corrected now.
Task 7: Provide at least three practical recommendations as to how you can improve the weak skills that have been identified.
Step 5: Relationship Building Action Plan
Now that you have completed the evaluation and read the feedback comments and results from the leadership assessments, it is time to develop a plan of action for improvement. Focus on the process of how to bring about improvement rather than what you should do. What are the steps you will take to resolve the weaknesses you have? Think of the leadership action plan as a way to improve the relationship-building skills with others and influence the people within the department to accomplish the work in an efficient manner that meets organizational standards and satisfies customers.
To accomplish the action plan, you will complete the tasks listed below. Be thoughtful in your responses reflecting upon all of the input documents. In completing each task, you will formulating a thesis statement and support the reasoning with rigorous, focused thinking that demonstrates the analytical skills GDD is looking from you.
Task 1: Read all of the reports and provided information closely.
Task 2: Provide an introduction that explains why people skills are important for a leader to possess.
Task 3: Identify and discuss the people skills that are lacking in your relationship with others as demonstrated in the assessments and feedback received in Step 3.
Task 4: Explain how the missing or weak people skills are hindering your success at building relationships with followers.
Task 5: Explain the significance of the leader-follower relationship to fulfilling the strategic plan of the leader.
Task 6. Identify the one critical factor from the facts provided (aside from the weaknesses in personal skills), that will specifically affect your leader-follower relationship more than any other factor. Explain how and why this fact will affect your future if not corrected now.
Task 7: Provide at least three practical recommendations as to how you can improve the weak skills that have been identified.
Step 6: Appendix
Task 1: Use the appendix to provide the results of each of the leadership assessments.
Task 2. Make sure to label each leadership assessment.
• Global Delivery Direct - Company Profile
Adobe Acrobat Document
Actions for 'Global Delivery Direct - Company Profile'
• Your GDD EVALUATION FORM HR Form 2230
Word Document
Actions for 'Your GDD EVALUATION FORM HR Form 2230'
• How to Analyze a Case Study
• Week 5 Learning Activities
Discussion Forum
Updated
To complete the learning activities, please create a new thread for each theme and identify in the subject line the theme for which you are responding. Students are expected to post to all themes and to at least two other students (across all themes) by Sunday. In responding to the learning activities and to other students, please be sure to use the course material using in-text citations and a reference list to cite the source(s) used. Remember, an in-text citation cannot exist without having a corresponding reference list and a reference list cannot exist without having a corresponding in-text citation. Use of the course material using in-text citations and a reference list is always expected in the learning activities and good practice for the assignments in the course.
Attachment:- Self_in_the_Diamond_Model.rar